King Sombra had long been corrupted by darkness. To rid him of it, Radiant Hope was forced to make a terrible sacrifice.
Now, Sombra may be free, but he has lost the only pony he ever really cared about. To get her back, Sombra must descend into the Prison of Shadows and brave the wrath of his own people, the Umbrum. But even with the unexpected aid of Princess Cadance, the quest to save Hope will be a treacherous and perilous one. And as he plumbs the depths for answers, Sombra may find it hard to live with what ultimately comes to light.
Featured on Equestria Daily on January 26th, 2020.
Chapters (4)
Very good! A nice weave of the comic as well! Carry on!
10009711
Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it.
This is awesome!
I enjoyed this quite a lot! I suppose it helps that I have a soft spot for just about every character involved in the story, but I enjoyed this as an alternate ending to Radiant Hope's arc in the comics. It seems more fitting, in a way, than the official ending—though I can see why the comics went the way they did, since this ending would've been something of a downer. Not entirely, though, and that's important. Even after everything that's happened, there's an essence of, dare I say, hope.
The writing's a little rough around the edges, and I feel like the story could've been paced better overall. You got the characters pretty well nailed, though, and that's probably the most important thing to get right. Without good characters, there's no story, so well done on that front.
If you do end up continuing this in another story, I'll definitely be back for more. Thanks for sharing this!
10013230
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate your insight.
I’m happy to hear you enjoyed the story. I’m fine with the ending the comics portrayed, but Radiant Hope’s arc had such a tragic trajectory that it seemed to call for similarly unhappy end. I think one of the reasons I keep revisiting this character is because I’m trying to figure out how to properly incorporate that sense of tragedy into the MLP-verse.
I’m glad you liked the character work. It is my first story written from Sombra’s perspective (and I haven’t really written anything for Cadance before) so I’m relieved that it did not come off as a total disaster. Especially given that I haven’t written MLP stuff in quite a while.
I’m not surprised that there are pacing and structural issues. I tend to either drag things out too long or speed them up too much. It’s a recurrent weakness in my writing. This story wouldn’t even exist if I was able to keep my prologue to a normal length, after all.
Hopefully, I’ll start work on the sequel soon. Having to write on the margins of real life makes it harder to predict, but I’d like to get more of these stories up before too long. I look forward to hearing from you again when the next one comes out.
10010666
Thanks again!
That symbol in your cover art...
Is that what I think it is? The Brand of Sacrifice on the lower half?
10019208
Huh. No, actually. That’s an unintended coincidence. My artistic skills aren’t strong enough to draw a true caduceus (Hope’s cutie mark), so I tried for a hyper-stylized version, with admittedly questionable results. I didn’t even notice the similarity until you brought it up.
Solid start! Can't wait to read the rest!
As much as I liked "Siege", I do feel the ending was a bit rushed. Cadance's attitude towards Sombra here was what I expected Celestia and Luna to act more like after they'd been freed from stone.
10053771
Glad to hear you liked my story.
As for Siege, it seems common for comics (and not just the MLP ones) to pack in as much story into as few pages as possible. Which means we don’t get much of things like the princesses’ reaction to Sombra’s reformation. It was fun to rebalance that somewhat with Cadance here.
And to think, I didn’t even originally intend her to have such a large part.
10060190
Ha, that is true.
Perhaps the princesses were just happy Sombra would be leaving the Crystal Empire.
I am, frankly, a little bit confused as to why the view count on this is so low, because it really is quite remarkable.
It's not perfect. I feel like a lot of Cadance and Sombra's dialogue, and some of the narration as well, is too modern and colloquial for the gravity of the type of story this is. There's a few bits, like how exactly Cadance was injured and why those injuries caused her to lose consciousness, that I think weren't described quite clearly enough for me to get a good sense of what was going on. And the cover art is... a little basic and amateurish?
But when far and away my biggest complaint about a story is simply that there's not more of it, I consider that story a success. The Sombra IDW comics are, I'd say, some of the best official comics produced, better than much of the show even, and they're just absolutely criminally underused by fanfiction writers. Any 'fic featuring Radiant Hope and Princess Amore is going to immediately get my attention, but this one really goes above and beyond the call of duty and expands the characters beyond what's seen in the comics in a way that still feels natural to them.
I was carping a little bit up above about the fact that the story ends so quickly, because it really did seem to be setting itself up as part of a much bigger world, but really I think this is a proper place for it to have ended- not everything is always going to wrap itself up completely in a half-dozen chapters and... I mean, I'd love to read about Sombra's quest to recover Amore's shards and figure out a solution to the prison spell, but that's really kind of a story in its own right distinct from this one. So, overall, top marks.
Have you given any thought to writing in the Reflections universe? That's another excellent comic that hints at a much bigger setting than what was actually seen in canon, and is also shamefully under-studied in fanfiction.
10067131
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate having your perspective on this story.
Yeah, what happened with Cadance at the end could probably have been a little clearer. Writing ‘action’ scenes is not my strong suit, so trying to both make Rabia’s attack seem like it came out of nowhere and convey the confusion of Sombra’s perspective might have been too much for me. It was a bit of a goof on my part. And I’ll happily agree that the cover art is not too good; I am, if nothing else, a fairly poor artist. But I’m glad there were other things about the story you liked.
The comics as a whole do seem to be very underused in fan work, especially the further you get from the first few story arcs. It’s a shame and I would like to see more attention devoted to the comics’ particular take on MLP. I did like the Reflections arc quite a bit. The universe established there seemed almost like it was designed to be explored further in fanfic and I have toyed with some ideas regarding it from time to time. But it does seem like Reflections gets a bit more attention than Siege of the Crystal Empire, so I don’t know if I could cover any ground other authors haven’t already done better. There seems to be more uncharted territory surrounding Sombra’s redemption arc and Hope’s character, comparatively speaking.
(Of course, you could do something interesting by combining the two, given how good-guy Sombra turning evil in Refliections might have foreshadowed / paved the way for villain Sombra to turn good in Siege. But I think others might have already covered this in their stories?)
10068485
Thanks!